Created as the culminating segment of The Catherine Wheel, a full-program piece of dance/theater [see: The Catherine Wheel], the all-dancing "Golden Section" was choreographed for an especially adept and cohesive Tharp group: "There were thirteen dancers," Tharp has recalled, "and there was one impulse." Set to four separately named musical compositions by Byrne, the continuous segment of dancing originally took over a stage just then cleared of its scenic and property elements.

In Tharp's words, reflecting on the particular impact of this forthright dance segment: "the dancers stormed the stage with a new, positive energy" and anything that wasn't sheer dancing "disappeared into a harmonious wash of light, costumes, music and movement." The scene was "an abstract arena of pure energy." Dressed in dancer/athlete get-ups of burnished golds, as if they were all Olympic champions, the seven male and six female dancers sail, soar, and tear through the air of the stage's golden, glowing light.

One of its song's lyrics tells "What a Day That Was," as its dancers tell what wonders only blissful joy and energy can communicate. Dashing, jogging, coupling, and intermixing, the men and women act as individuals and as an individually select race of superbeings. One of the references in the "Catherine Wheel" of the full work's title names a pinwheel-spinning firework that shoots off sparks in 360-degree directions; Tharp's non-stop, aerobically heated, artful activities achieve with movement, energy that fireworks can with shooting sparks.

Music by David Byrne

Five Golden Sections
What A Day That Was
Big Blue Plymouth
Light Bath

Five Flights Up

Music by Squirrel Nut Zippers

Danny Diamond
Lover's Lane

Red Line

Music by Michael Nyman and Alberto Iglesias from the motion picture "The Piano"

A Wild and Distant Shore
The Embrace
The Promise
Little Impulse
The Scent of Love

Music Available from Waterloo Records. 6th & Lamar

I do not recall a more ecstatic reception, or a greater sense of physical exhilaration
communicated to an audience. Clement Crisp, FINANCIAL TIMES. 12/16/83

When The Golden Section was performed as the finale of The Catherine Wheel, it burned away the characters petty squabbles in blazing trajectories, creating an ode to valor and dedication.
Deborah Jowitt, THE VILLAGE VOICE, 5/16/95.